Richard Allen Garriott, exec producer, NCsoft North America, will be honored with this years Game Developers Choice Award for Lifetime Achievement. The gaming pioneer is best known for his monumental game series, ULTIMA. Garriott, known in the industry as Lord British, will be recognized for fueling the presence of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) in the mass market. The 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony will held on March 22, 2006, at the San Jose Civic Auditorium.
The ceremony is produced and hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by the International Game Developers Assoc. (IGDA),
It is a high honor to be counted among the legends who are previous recipients of this award, such as Will Wright and Eugene Jarvis, said Garriott.
A 20-year veteran programmer and videogame designer, Garriott has received numerous awards, including COMPUTER GAMING WORLDS 15 Most Influential Industry Players, NEXT GENERATIONS Americas Elite, PC GAMERs Game Gods, and PC GAMES Designer of the Year. Garriott, along with his brother, Robert, was also named Entrepreneur of the Year by INC. magazine. Garriott was also recently chosen as the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
Garriott almost single-handedly brought the role-playing game experience to glowing life, remarked Jamil Moledina, director of the GDC. Given his ongoing role in evolving the form to its current massively multiplayer online incarnation, we are proud to honor him for his lifetime achievement. Son of Skylab and Spacelab astronaut Owen K. Garriott, Richard took an interest in computers at a young age. He began programming games in high school, producing his first published game, AKALABETH, at age 19. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, Garriott began developing one of the most successful, longest-running game series of all time ULTIMA.
Garriott and his brother formed Origin Systems Inc. to begin publishing their own games. The company was acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1992. By 1999, Garriott resigned and, in the following year, he returned to the industry with his new startup, Destination Games, in partnership with his brother and Starr Long, producer of ULTIMA ONLINE. In 2001, Destination merged with NCsoft where Garriott acts as producer and designer of MMORPGs. His current project, TABULA RASA, is expected to launch sometime this year, and he will share his experiences creating the game at this year's GDC.
Garriotts creative vision and ability to push questions of morality via his game designs has paved the way for other game creators to explore all aspects of the human condition, Jason Della Rocca, exec director, IGDA, said.
Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement award are selected by the Choice Awards Advisory Board, comprised of a diverse set of developers from across the globe. Past recipients of this award include: Eugene Jarvis, Mark Cerny, Gunpei Yokoi (posthumous), Yuji Naka and Will Wright.
